


Postpartum Prometheus

by babbyspanch, saltslimes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bunker Era, Dubious Consent, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mpreg, Panic Attacks, Unplanned Pregnancy, Vomit, milf sex cult, wildly canon noncompliant, xenogenesis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:55:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28858455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babbyspanch/pseuds/babbyspanch, https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltslimes/pseuds/saltslimes
Summary: Welcome to the Supernatural renaissance. Welcome to Castiel and the terrible naissance.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 17
Kudos: 59





	1. And Terrors Carry him Off

**Author's Note:**

> [What follows being the forbidden text, as it was received by witnesses SPRUCE and SLIME]

_In my dripping (pain)_

_The balmer winds_ _and terrors_

_Carry him off_

-Sappho (trans. Anne Carson)

The first time Dean ever fucks Cas it’s dizzying and desperate—but they don't kiss.

It’s on a hunt. Brutal and sickening in ways Dean really didn't think he’d be shocked by anymore. That is, until they wandered into a cabin in the woods and found one of the missing mothers trying to pull what was left of her son's spine out of his neck so she could mount it on the pike properly. She hadn't been alone. There were at least seven other women cheering her on, singing in haunting harmonies while blood crept up their arms. Dean wasn't alone either, and he wasn't going to forget the look on Castiel's face as long as he lived. Which, barring any more miracles, wouldn’t be that long.

{-_-}

It starts in a diner, unassuming. Sam glued to his laptop and Cas gazing out the window like he does. Sometimes Dean wonders if he can see stuff they can’t—well, he knows he can, but he wonders what that stuff is. What lurks on the outside edges of his gaze in ways Cas is familiar with? In ways Dean can't even casually daydream about?

Cas’s gaze flicks to meet his own, quick and reflective. Dean takes a massive bite out of his turkey club—one that would make Sam flinch and throw napkins at him. Cas just maintains eye contact, tilts his head the slightest bit. Dean chews with his mouth open. Cas gives him a ghost of a smile over the dirty formica table top.

Sam throws a wad of napkins at him. “Stop it, dude. I’m trying to read. The font on this PDF is _so_ small.”

Dean rolls his eyes and wipes the mayo-mustard-tomato-seeds off his face and tosses the napkins back at his brother's shaggy head. Sam makes a deeply affronted noise. Dean casts a quick grin at Cas, who’s watching them from his spot, untouched tomato soup and a pile of saltines in front of him—another little mockery of human need that Cas sometimes spontaneously decided to put up.

“This is serious, guys. This is the seventh mom to go missing and if we don’t figure it out soon—“

“I already did, Sammy. MILF sex cult.”

“Dean it is _not_ a MILF sex cult.”

“It may be a MILF sex cult,” Cas says. Watery light is pouring onto their table from the window. It washes him out, makes the reds on his nose and knuckles that much flatter. Dean beams.

“See. It _may_ be a MILF sex cult.” His voice is so smug it pisses even _him_ off for a moment. Sam's mouth tightens and his eyebrows pinch, but he doesn’t say anything.

{-_-}

It turned out it was a MILF sex cult. In a way. 

Nothing is ever _just_ a MILF sex cult, that would be too easy. That’s a world that nobody, no matter how righteous, gets to live in.

It’s some sort of Greek cult thing. Cas and Sam correct him in haunting unison that the Bacchic cults have just as much Roman history but Dean couldn’t care less.

The point was: moms everywhere were peacing out of their everyday lives with no warning and sexing each other up in the woods for five days straight every month. And Dean… Well, Dean kinda wanted to see.

“Dean. There’s an entire fucking play about why that’s a bad idea. We just have to see if they’re being brainwashed, gank the leader and call it a night.”

“Oh come on, Sammy. Like you dont wanna be peepin’ no toms tonight.” Dean laughs, shoving a stake of myrtle through his belt loop. He tries his best to put on the Samwise Gamgee accent, but the joke seems to fly past the two of them. He glances over at Cas across the motel room, who seems pretty entranced with a carved panther they found at the scene of the last disappearance. It’s some sort of sparkling sharp rock and Cas looks at it like it holds the secrets of every universe. 

Dean wonders if Cas will finally start decorating his room. If this filched _maybe_ magic item will have a spot on his bedside table that looks the exact same as when Dean dragged it in there months ago.

Dean had a habit of carving little notches on motel bed frames, pulling free pieces of cracked tiles in the bathroom or peeling up the silicone where it was rotting away from the fixtures. When he was a kid he did this mindlessly, but as he got older, and started thinking about it, he realized he was trying to make marks places. He wasn’t gonna remember any given motel room, but this way, even if only for a short time, the room would remember him.

Feels wrong to have a place and not decorate it. But Cas isn’t quite wired that way, maybe.

{-_-}

Something about traipsing through the woods at night always makes Dean feel like a little kid. In some ways that’s a good feeling, but in most ways, it makes him feel a little bit mashed up inside. Like someone put him in the bed of a truck and rattled him around for a few miles. 

Cas doesn’t need a flashlight, but Dean and Sam cast weak, yellow light over rotting plant matter, slick spaces where the puddles lay in shadow and never really dried up. The snow had left the woods ages ago, but the melt lies heavy on the remains of last years’ fall leaves. 

They hear the singing before they spot anyone through the trees. It weaves its way through the trunks, strangely physical and clear despite the distance and the fact it was… you know. A sound.

Something about it feels off. Feels like a dislocated shoulder. The harmonies should be sweeping but instead they creep. The rhythm is syncopated in a way that puts Dean’s teeth on edge. He doesn’t want Sam anywhere near this. 

It’s suddenly such a core truth that Dean has to get Sam out right-now-this-instant that his fingers twitch on his gun and he whirls around to face the other direction.

Around him the chant builds.

“Sam. Impala. Now.”

“Dean, _what_?”

“Now, Sam.”

And he doesn’t want Sam anywhere fucking near the wrongness that is screaming inside him. Urging him and tugging at him to do something bloody and brutal. His vision swims and Sam is still there. Still refusing to move. It feels like all of his teeth are loose and garbled in his mouth, like his bones are breaking in fistfuls and all he wants to do is rend.

“ _Now_ , Sammy.” Dean’s reaching for something else to say, to actually convince him, because it’s not like Sam is going to fucking _listen_. Then Cas reaches past him and puts a hand on Sam’s shoulder, and they both vanish.

“Cas?” Dean asks the empty woods. He appears again a second later, in that same swish of wings. Without Sam. “Cas? What’d you do?” He tries to keep the edge out of his voice, feeling like a rabid dog.

“I took Sam to the car, like you said.” Cas says this plainly, flatly. But there’s something in the way his eyes linger on Dean’s face that isn’t quite as smooth as normal. Something jagged that sticks to him; the serrated edge of a hunting knife.

They sprint the rest of the way without saying a word to each other. Keeping pace even though Cas could fly ahead. If Dean didn’t know better he’d think Cas was enjoying stretching his legs out, long and lean, eating up the muddied earth.

The chant echoes on. 

They arrive at the cabin. Dean can’t even make a joke, the terror and the hunger biting at him— through him. He’s so aware of Cas breathing jagged beside him. Electric and winded in ways he doesn’t need to be. 

Never _needed_ to be. _Choses_ to be. Another human facsimile. 

Ruddy red is brushing over Cas’ nose, joined on the back of Cas’ neck and across his cheekbones.

Dean drags his eyes away and is met with a very different red.

The woman’s name is Abigail Themus and her son’s name was Peter. He had been named Peter, at some juncture, in some hospital, by someone who (theoretically) loved him. Pieces of him are strewn across the floor, strings of muscle hanging from the joints like an unravelled sweater. Skin doesn’t rip clean, like hitting the wrapping paper in the exact way with a pair of scissors, or tearing cloth along the selvedge. It rips jagged; elastic snapped— taut and breaking along invisible tension points.

Seeing Abigail wiggle a vertebrate out of her son’s neck and push a broom handle into the space left behind is what does it. The bone slaps onto the floor, bright bright red and ruddy. It rolls across the ground and one of the other women picks it up. Dean doesn’t recognize her but he sees the bone rising to her lips and her naked greedy smile and he cracks her skull faster then blinking. A chunk of her hair catches his watch and it lifts the part of the skull it was attached to, spraying gore out across a floor that was crying out for varnish. Blood soaks in fast on dry wood. Dean whirls and his eyes fix on the next mother.

He doesn’t even take out his gun.

It’s brutal and savage and unhinged. His feet skid across the gore on the ground and he hasn’t felt this untethered since hell herself laid a razor in his hands and crooned at him to start slicing.

The mothers keep chanting.

He catches a glimpse of khaki coat and it registers in him that Cas is fighting at his side, terrible and beautiful. Dean wonders if maybe, years ago, this was how they clawed out of hell together.

If they pulled each other up hand over hand, wrecking everyone’s shit on the way out the door. Something about that image catches hold of him; Dean and Cas, Cas and Dean, strong and lethal and _united_.

It’s unbearable.

They stumble out of the cabin. Dean is covered in gore. Cas hasn’t fared much better. He isn’t squeamish. Ask anyone, he’s the furthest thing. But... this--he shucks his jacket off. He _needs_ it off, and then he reaches for Cas, and he pulls his coat off too. And Cas just looks at him, blank. Or not blank. That evaluating look all angels have, like they’re tallying up the sins against the good deeds, with that extra Cas flavor, like he’s never seen a face before, and he wants to know it inside and out.

“Uh. Can you do some kinda. Angel laundry?” Dean tries, gesturing to his discarded jacket. His voice comes out rougher than he expected. Cas is closer than he realized. He doesn’t stand this close anymore, but he used to. He used to stand so close that Dean could stumble and--

That train of thought runs into a wall. He wants to shake himself out, but the feeling, whatever it is--it’s in deep. Embedded far under the skin. Thunders to the same beat of that chant, lingering in his bones.

“Dean,” Cas says, and it’s rough too--although he’s always rough. It’s urgent, demanding, somehow. Dean realizes he’s holding Cas by the bicep. He’s _so_ close.

Dean steps back, lets go of Cas. He’s been holding him so tight his fingers tremble with nothing to clench onto.

“Is Sam gonna come help us clean up this mess, or...?” He isn’t going to get an answer about cleaning the clothes. For the most part Cas is constant, but sometimes his powers seem to… fritz.

“No. I locked him in.” Cas stays standing where he is.

“So what? He’s a grown man, he can just pop the locks.”

“No. I made them inaccessible from the inside.”

“You seriously gave Baby child safety locks? Are you kidding me.” The banter is almost normal. It could be a conversation like any other day, but for the breathlessness hiding behind Dean’s teeth.

Cas looks at him. The same way he always does. Like there’s nothing else to see in the whole of creation. Dean can’t fucking stand it.

He tries to turn and start walking. The chant keeps moving through him, that same odd syncopation.

Abruptly, Cas takes back his coat. He pulls it from Dean's hands where it was bundled with his own. Cas slips out of his suit jacket. Unrolls himself from the soaking blood and running brains. Folds the overcoat inside the suit to keep his shirt clean as he carries it. Dean feels the night air worm its way up his back, trace along the divot of his spine.

They haven’t moved from the brightdark clearing; night fencing them in. But the noises of the wild are pushing around them, free and without consequence. Dean feels drunk. He can tell his pupils are blown wide and dark, trying to catch every hint of movement from Cas. His eyes feel itchy and heavy, the weight of his eyelashes pulls his blinks slow. He breathes and wants Cas closer, so he goes to him.

Tossing his ruined coat on the ground he fiddles carefully with the angel’s tie, loosening the knot with one hand and brushing the gore from the ribbed fabric with the other.

Castiel’s mouth is open. Dean is so so _so_ aware that it’s open, the breath hot. He can feel his own warm breath swelling like an ocean tide over his lips, the cool air of the wilds lays against his sensitive skin. Does Cas feel it, too?

God, the number of times Dean’s asked himself that. With wonder or frustration, rage or trepidation. Fear or hope. Can Cas feel it too?

Cas’s fingers catch on his, tumble into them. Warm and thick, they roll over the hand trying to brush the tie clean. Dean feels _it_ catch in his throat, flare through him in a way it shouldn't. Has no damn right to. That Dean has never asked for.

“It’s useless, Dean.” Cas mutters. Dean can feel the stirring of air against his cheek, and lets his eyes flick to Cas’ face anyway. He knew Cas would be this close, but he didn’t know he’d be tilting his head like _that_. That he’d curve his neck into a perfect slope, that his chin would be tilted up just the perfect number of degrees to nearly have their lips brush. Perfect, perfect perfect.

“Useless?” He breathes, lost in the meaning of the words, no understanding of what Cas was talking about. The other man shifts, ever so slightly, and Dean sways with him.

“The tie.” Cas sounds wrecked. Timbre heavy and rolling, a boulder dragged along a riverbed. “It’s ruined.”

“Oh.” Dean’s voice is all breathy again. So low it cracks. “That’s—uh. That’s too bad.”

“ _Dean_.” Hairs raise on Dean. His arms, his neck, his shins. “I don’t care about the fucking tie.”

His fingers tighten on Dean’s and the noise that slips out is involuntary and completely compromising. Dean swears. Yanks Cas in with his tie. Cas groans and pushes him into the closest tree, hand on his hip the other sliding up Dean’s body fast. It finds its home tangled in Dean’s hair as they pant, joining the night noises.

He’s ripping Cas’ tie free, undoing his fly and jerking the fabric down the not-quite-a-man’s thick thighs, wiry with black hair. Cas’ belt clinks somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. Dean drags his fingers up through it on the way back up, delighting in the texture as he mouths at Cas’ neck.

Castiel growls. _Holy shit._

Dean bites him sharp, a reward. He thuds back into the tree, shirt riding up and the bark digging into his exposed tender skin. Dean sucks in a breath, the spring night air still clinging to a hint of winter past, even this late in the season.

Cas yanks three layers of shirts off Dean’s shoulders and tugs them down his arms, unweildy and awkard, but incredibly fucking hot.

By the time Dean’s pants are around his ankles he’s rock hard and has Cas pinned instead.

He’s aware, trembling on the edge of acknowledgment, that Cas is only pinned because he wants to be— and that’s a heady recognition of frustration and attraction all its own. In another, even more distant part of himself, Dean is aware that they had not talked about this at all beforehand. Part of him always thought they’d talk about it before—

He viciously twisted that thought off at the pass. Something was going on, yes. But, fuck he could _not_ care less.

Cas grabs his ass and grinds up against him, brutal and precise— calculated. Somehow knowing exactly what would drive Dean completely past the point of no return. Dean grins into the angel’s warmth, greedy and hungry. 

Cas starts making little rhythmic noises into the side of his neck, insistent and suggestive— and how could Dean say no to that?

So he fingers him open against the tree trunk, pants hanging off one of Cas’ ankles; it managed to slip off over his slim shoes. They sway a little with the rhythm, brushing up against Dean’s hip where he’s hitched Cas’ leg over to get better access to his asshole. It’s not nearly wet enough, so Dean spits on his fingers while maintaining eye contact with Cas, rolling their foreheads together. He moves to lower his hand but Cas snatches it and _sucks_.

“Holy _shit_.” Dean hisses, feeling something inside him shake and break apart, claw and snap and lash trying to hold onto what he wanted most. Luckily, Cas was already in his arms, scrambling for balance, mouth so hot and so wet and so sloppy it was going to send Dean to therapy after this.

“Dean. Hurry _up_ ,” Cas hisses, shoving Dean’s hand back to his ass, arching his hips to meet him. “I want you inside me _yesterday_ ,” he growls. Dean sees stars. Almost fully whites out. He has to take a second to gather himself. Breathe and let his fingers shake a moment before pushing one up against Cas’ entrance, rolling and experimental. 

Cas loosens under him, fast and thoughtless as he murmurs against Dean’s neck—breathless. “Come on, come on, come _on_.”

Dean can't stop himself from obeying, sliding the first knuckle in, shocked at how warm and hot it is. Cas groans through gritted teeth, his jaw jutting out and eyes drifting shut, hands still impatient on Dean, tapping against his shoulder. Urging him on. “You can’t _break_ me, Dean. Angel, remember?”

Cas— needy and rolling, wide and hot, fucking himself sloppy on Dean’s fingers-- two of them now.

And holy shit. Holy _shit_ . He gets to do this to Cas. He’s _doing_ this to him. And Cas is _letting_ him. He pants and begs in Dean's ear to _keep_ going. And Dean does.

That is, he pushes his dick into Cas and fucks him against the tree without mercy or slowing. Cas almost yanks his hair out and Dean is practically drooling with it, mouth open and frantic— painting wet into the thick muscle just before Cas’ shoulder, ruining the angel’s dress shirt. 

Cas starts pulling harder, breath in short gasps. Dean takes this as a cue to go deeper. Judging by Cas’ noises, he’s right, and that alone has him gagging for it; moving slow and deep. Cas is tight around him, and Dean can barely stand it. How is this _real?_

Cas’ nails sink into Dean’s back and _rake_ , and all thoughts Dean had fly out of his head. 

Cas latches onto Dean’s neck and _sucks_ , and what gets Dean isn’t the pain or the pleasure or the warmth— it’s the knowledge that Cas just _marked_ him.

“Cas—I’m gonna—” he tries, and Cas makes a noise as if to respond, but it’s too late, and he cums without meaning to.

Cas blinks up at him, blue eyes wider than Dean’s ever seen them.

_Oh, fuck._

“Oh,” Cas says. 

//////

Castiel can tell the moment everything went wrong. 

He exists huge and sprawling, but he feels the pinprick of sand rubbing his grace incorrectly and knows that something has just come into being that should not have. His and Dean’s baby. 

Dean’s soul and Cas’ grace were already… well acquainted. Grabbing the soul of a struggling righteous man with a knife and teeth–who hadn't felt a kind touch in forty years–was a dangerous undertaking.

Dean's soul was grabby. And bitey. And clawing and brutal and full of mistrust and hurt and radiance and pain. And Cas was a giant target. His soul had raked and yanked and pulled and, in a manner of speaking, got quite a bit of Cas tucked under his fingernails. 

It wasn’t a problem, for the most part. The leftover grace had seared itself into a handprint after Dean struggled up out of the mud and blood of hell. After Castiel’s grace wrapped and swaddled him, warm and expansive and eventually—calming. 

It wasn’t a problem. Until just now, when Dean came inside him.

Dean stumbles back a step, face flushed in embarrassment, presumably. 

“Did you—um. Should I?” Gesturing to where Castiel’s erection used to be. “Oh.”

Feeling like he just took a brick to the face, Castiel shakes his head.

“No. We should get back. It’s fine,” he says, quickly pulling his pants on and fumbling to do up his belt. Dean has to turn away to pick up his own discarded top layers, and Cas braces himself on the tree for a second. He does not breathe out of pattern, he stays even, because even as things are unravelling inside his true body he at least has control of his vessel. Some control.

That was the moment he felt some of Dean’s come slide down his inner thigh, already cooling. Naturally. He reaches for Dean’s shoulder to fly them back to the car, but Dean flinches.

“Uh. Maybe we outta walk,” Dean says.

“Right,” Cas forces out. His underwear hasn’t been Jimmy Novak’s in a while. Arguably, that first time that the archangels tore him to shreds, whatever got remade was “new” in some sense. But sometimes it’s a reflex to think of his clothes as belonging to Jimmy. After all, they still reflect him. It’s still the same outfit that Jimmy left Pontiac in, even if all the parts have been destroyed and remade or re-bought at some point. He stalls out at the thought: _Dean’s come is getting on Jimmy’s boxer-briefs._ Because it isn’t true, but it is massively more tangible than the thing that is happening, unbidden, inside his grace.

Dean clears his throat loudly, but says nothing. 

And now, during their sexual congress, Dean’s soul had gotten far too close, and dragged its fingernails across the furrows it left years and years ago. It gathered together Castiel’s trailing grace, like a magnet sweeping up fine iron filings. Alive and thrumming. A little ball of combined soul and grace, grace and soul. The bond between them was too strong. It might have been okay if this was the first time. It _was_ okay the first time. But things inside Castiel had shaken loose. Dean came and his soul, vibrant and screaming and still so radiant— had left a piece of itself in the iron filings of Castiel. And something sparked. Life had sparked.

They walk back to the car, where a furious Sam is hammering on the rear window. Castiel remembers the locks, and releases them. Sam unfolds himself from the car, nostrils flaring.

“What the _hell_ , guys?” he demands.

“We took care of it,” Cas says, and then to Dean: “Call if you need something.” He feels like he’s going to spread his wings and find himself unable to fly, but then he’s away. He’s on a street somewhere in Cleveland, staring at a telephone pole full of staples—blessedly far from the Winchesters. But not far enough. 

There is no distance that would be far enough.

////////

“What got up his ass?” Sam asks, to the space that Castiel had been occupying a second ago.

Dean often gapes at Sam slack-jawed. It’s one of his default expressions. This, however, looks like he’s shorted-out. Sam looks him over more closely. There’s a bruise starting to form on his neck--kind of a weird shape.

“What happened to you, anyway?”

“We got the MILFs. Cult dealt with. Let’s go home.”

“Uh, are you going to explain why you had Cas put me in time-out?”

“Spell was making me want to kill you. Best solution: get you outta there.” Dean climbs into the car, probably as a means to end the conversation, the way he always tries to when he’s decided to play “dad” and make all the calls with zero justification. But honestly, it’s late, Sam’s tired, the cultists are taken care of. Cas wouldn’t lie, and Dean doesn’t have a reason to. Sam slides into the passenger seat with a sigh.

“So what? We’re just not gonna talk about it?”

“Correct.” Dean starts the engine, and Sam throws a glance out the window and thinks about how much, by horrific percentage, of his life he’s spent in this car.

“Did you do something to Cas? He seemed kinda pissed. And if the spell was making you want to kill _me_...” Sam says. This is a peace offering, even though Dean’s the one being an asshole, as per. But rather than respond, Dean clenches the steering wheel so tight his knuckles go white, and presses the gas harder. 

“Cas is just being Cas,” he snaps. Sam doesn’t think that’s ever been true. But he’s known Dean long enough that he doesn’t bother pushing the issue.

Cas may be Cas, but Dean is Dean, too.


	2. I've Made a Huge Mistake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this fic is done by the ever sexy SPRUCE aka Babbyspanch themself.
> 
> penis serious penis delirious  
> go into the woods call that penis mysterious  
> penis various penis hilarious  
> dawn of the age of the penis aquarius  
> penis ponticulous penis meticulous  
> wearing my clown shoes im penis ridiculous  
> \- tumblr user c0rpseductor

Sam wanted to spend the night at the motel they already paid for, but Dean needs to drive. After heading back to the motel to grab their bags, he drags Sammy out to the Impala. The big baby rubbing at his eyes and complaining, words already slurring a little.

Dean bundles him into the passenger seat and tosses their shit in the back. By the time he gets back from the final sweep through the motel room Sam is out, snoring against the window.

Normally, this would make Dean smile. But then, normally, Dean hadn’t fucked his best friend against a tree in the woods.

Dean clambers into the Impala, skin still grimy with dirt and guilt. He runs his hand around Baby’s wheel, smooth round motion. Ignores the bark under his fingernails from where they had dug and pushed and—

“Dean?” Sam murmurs when he turns the key in the ignition. “You aren’t gonna shower? That fight seemed… messy.”

“Nah.” Dean answers, fast and without thinking. “Just wanna get back.”

Dean pops _Mothership_ in the tape deck, keeping the volume low. Even with _Immigrant Song_ it always knocks Sam right out.

Soon enough, Sam’s conked out against the back of the bench seat and Dean turns onto the highway, streetlights getting taller around him as he pushes his foot down, steady and still.

The night around him is wide and loose— not the same dense night that lives in cities, hole-punched windows of light— reminders of people. In homes, in lives, in living. 

Out here is just wide, rolling night, _Whole Lotta Love_ , and Dean himself in the driver's seat.

And isn’t that the problem, huh. He snorts to himself. The burden of the driver's seat. The responsibility of the ten car pile-up; his and Cas’ friendship the only smoking corpse casualty.

Dean has seen Cas shut down before, something behind his eyes stalling out, stuttering. But this… 

It felt different. Dean’s fingers tighten around the wheel as he tries to forget the texture of Castiel's skin and heat around and under him. He rolls his shoulders and the collar of his backup coat brushes over the tender skin where Cas left a hickey.

Dean flips the collar down and speeds up, alone on the loose dark highway, guided by white lines and pools of yellow light from the street lamps. Straight on till morning.

The bunker is collecting the dusty dregs of red dawn light when they get back. Dean shakes Sam awake, slings his bag over his shoulder and heads right for the showers. Hoping that it’s still early enough that Kevin will be asleep in his room.

He is. Or he’s not in the common areas, at least. Dean gets in the shower and cleans out the scratch marks down his back, breathing measured through his nose.Cas’ hands had been where his are now. Had raked down his back and pulled him closer.

It was some kind of spell. The chant that had been echoing around the forest. It had been too spooky to not be magic. And it had infected them both. Drove them to– something unthinkable.

_Unthinkable_. His fingers moved against the current of the shower and stroked over his marked neck. He feels his dick twitch at the memory. 

He covers his mouth and lets his eyes fall shut, the water beating down hot and painful on his scratches. They were stinging, real, and serving as some indicator of how deep they were, how red and desperate. Dean gasps out past his fingers, drawing his fist tighter around his dick, moving faster.

That spell did that to Cas. Turned him into something Cas was never supposed to be, something dirty. And Dean went with it. Was swept up in what felt like permission from Cas. Felt like endorsement.

He lets out a wounded noise, lost in the shower sounds— but feels his throat move all the same. Knows the sound was made, even if he didnt hear it echo off the tiles.

God. _What has he done?_ Dean leans in to touch his forehead to the tiles—still cold even though the water is almost too hot to be comfortable. Stroking his dick to the thought of teeth on his neck, to the horror and the incredible rush of it, but he keeps seeing Cas’ face the moment after it was over; flat, totally void of expression, as if he’d absented his vessel in that second.

He wants to bash his head into the tiles. Crack one, maybe, if he uses enough force. Instead he shuts off the shower, erection fading anyways. It’s like dipping his hand into a bucket of bait. All the worms are too tangled up in each other. He’s not gonna pull any single one free.

/////

Cleaveland at night looks more or less indistinguishable from any other American city, at least to Castiel. The road is wet, but it’s not raining. It seems to have just let up, and the few pedestrians he spots are carrying umbrellas. He walks with no purpose, and no direction. There is nowhere to go. There is, distantly. Castiel has things to do, in the way he _always_ has things to do, even when the Winchesters have little or no need of him.

Thinking about them is a mistake. His thoughts go to Dean. Like the space of a missing tooth (and what a momentous new experience that is) he’s drawn to the part inside him where something pre-soul-shaped is forming. Expanding like a tiny universe, pulsing inside his grace. He seeks, and finds its corresponding body in his vessel. It has no limbs, no shape, barely even the blueprint of organs. An irregular, though familiar, genome. Nephilim. It had always sounded like a swear to him. It was his last reason for going to Earth, before Dean. Destroying nephilim, on a mission from Heaven. When Heaven still gave missions, and Castiel was still their faithful soldier. He remembered everything _making sense_ , or at least appearing to.

A horn honks, breaking him out of his thoughts, and he realizes he’s wandered into a parking lot. One of the countless rectangular buildings that dot suburban landscapes. In this case, a Wal-Mart. Light from the glass front doors floods out onto the wet pavement. He’s drawn in.

The atmosphere inside is sterile, hypnotic. The space feels both at once crowded and awfully empty. Castiel drifts through aisles of bathroom products, tupperware containers, toothpaste and hair products. He stops in an aisle, attention caught by the hanging sign, which proclaims it to be “Baby Needs.” The things that babies need, evidently, come in white packages. Sometimes yellow, occasionally pink and blue. The things that babies need are manyfold, and most of them largely unfamiliar.

His eyes snag on a package of brightly-colored stickers. He reads. They are to be placed on the forehead of an infant or young child, and will indicate a fever if one is present. This feels like another brick to the face.

Castiel thinks if he reaches inside his self, his true self, right now, although it will be painful, no doubt, he could dig the thing out and discard it. And the growth in his vessel would be halted too. It would rot into something he could heal. He can feel it tugging at his grace already. Demanding resources to grow in the inhospitable environment of a human abdominal cavity. He thinks he _could_ do that. He’s relatively sure.

He tries to imagine putting this into words that Dean would understand. He tries to imagine how Dean would _feel_ about understanding them. He imagines a crude joke, but he can’t really guess what emotion would be behind it.

Family, Dean emphasizes. Although Adam wasn’t that, or not enough of that. But his mother. His brother. Sometimes Cas. Almost Cas. 

That’s not why he doesn’t reach in and do anything. And it’s not why he leaves the Wal-Mart with a disturbed surety that he’s not going to do anything. It’s because it occurs to him, despite his best efforts, that he doesn’t _want_ to kill this thing, abomination it may be. Because it’s made up out of Dean, and brutally, uselessly, Cas loves it for that.

/////

Kevin knows that Dean and Sam always wear their boots around the bunker but the floors are, in all honesty, pretty clean, and his socks are pretty thick (the new ones he picked up on a Wal-Mart run with Sam) so he just sort of shuffles around like a cat.

Dean hates this because Kevin has startled him and made him spill coffee on himself three different times, but wearing shoes indoors is just… the effort, the discomfort, the sweatiness.

Sam blinks when Kevin enters the kitchen, but he doesn’t look that shocked. They’re finally used to him being around, seemingly. Or as used as they're gonna get. Kevin grabs a bowl and fills it with frosted flakes, shuffles over to the fridge and pours the milk.

“How’d the hunt go?” he asks, sliding into the seat across from Sam.

“Weird,” he says, and doesn’t go on to elaborate.

Kevin sort of weighs how much he cares about a real answer. “Meaning?”

Sam huffs. “Meaning they locked me in the car for forty minutes and then Dean was a bitch the whole way back.”

Kevin can’t help a little snort. The image of Sam debating punching one of the windows out of Dean’s beloved car or getting trapped like a baby until he started playing games on his phone was a funny one. 

“Yeah, I mean. That’s weird.” He hesitates a moment. “Not wholly out of character though.”

Sam makes this face when he gets indignant. Righteous and wrinkled with a twitch in his mouth and a swing in his hair. “In what way?”

“I mean. Dean’s been an over-protective mother hen for half the time I’ve known you guys.”

Sam does another kind of wrinkly frown, but this one means he's thinking.

“But you guys got the thing, right?” Kevin presses. Sam nods. His expression shifts, like he’s trying to remember.

“I think Cas and Dean pissed each other off again. Or something.”

“How?”

“I don’t _know_ , I was locked in the _car_.”

“But they sort of… I mean. They do that a lot.” In the time he’s known Dean and Cas (as in, a duo, in the same room together) they’ve had an understanding. A knowing of each other that runs deeper than any fissure could crack. A sort of mutual trust that whatever happens, they’d work it out. It was… sort of comforting. Especially in the face of the world as Kevin now saw it. Dean could absolutely still be a bitch, though.

“Yeah.” Sam sighs, rubbing his temple. “You have a point. But it felt… different this time.”

“Like..?”

“Like Cas seemed really… stiff, or something. And he left right away.”

“Maybe he had something to do?” Kevin frowns. “Isn’t he normally kinda stiff? I thought that was an angel thing.”

“I mean, it’s more of a _Cas_ thing, but yeah.”

“So then what’s the issue?”

“It was different, dude.” Sam shrugged. “Like he shit his pants or something. Which he didn’t, because he’s an angel, and they don’t do that. To my knowledge.”

“Shit or shit their pants?”

“Either. Both.”

“Huh.” Kevin remarks.

Kevin eats a mouthful of his cereal. _Crunch, crunch, crunch._ It echoes a little off the tall bunker ceiling. Sam sighs.

“It was weird and… So many of our problems stem from just...” He gestures vaguely and stops talking.

“Not communicating? Or listening? Or trusting each other to know what's best for themselves? Or-“

“Okay that’s enough.” Sam shoots him a look and Kevin suddenly remembers how tall the man is. And wide. He doesn’t think he’s met a wider man.

“Let me know if I can help, or something,” he offers. It’s not much of a real offer, and he knows Sam’s not gonna take him up on it. But it’s one of those things you say just to say it. Sam nods and gets up and wanders off in the direction of the library, and Kevin uses the back of his spoon to drown the frosted flakes that are still floating.

The calendar that Dean picked and hung up for some reason (with pictures of kittens of all things) was on the wrong month. Kevin stared at it for a while, until it nagged, and eventually got up and flipped it over to April. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> salt over the phone while editing: i agree with you but we can't ACTUALLY write dean as a stone butch because he is technically a cis man.


	3. Blowing Funfetti Chunks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up: [X](https://dragqueendean.tumblr.com/post/643614418294489088/deanpdf-just-some-light-reading)

Where the branches of the willow reach the ground and brush against the grass in any wind, Harris is picking up half-rotted pop bottles and crumpled Mcdonalds bags. It’s strange to find them so far from the Mcdonalds. More strange, however, is the dude sitting on the bench closest to them.

“Becca.” Harris tries to say it quietly, since she’s only a few feet away, but she flatly ignores him. “Becca. Becca! Psst.”

“Saying psst is not like, a subtle way to get someone’s attention,” she says, but comes over anyways. “If you show me goose poop again I’m going to ask to switch shifts.”

“Fuck you. No, look.” Harris tries to indicate subtly, but Becca looks past the figure on the bench, so eventually he gives up and points. The guy on the bench doesn’t look up. He has a rumpled trenchcoat and his tie loose. He’s in dress shoes, on this muddy day after rain in the park. He’s also eating a sheet cake. Like a whole one. A square one. Methodically too. He’s got a fork and he’s approaching it from one corner.

“Is that dude eating a sheet cake?” Becca asks. Harris nods. “ _Here_?” Harris nods again, for lack of anything to say. “There’s not even like a grocery store nearby. Where’d he get it?”

“Maybe he had it in his car.”

“A long way into the park to lug a whole sheet cake. Why is he eating it alone on a bench?”

“Maybe it’s his birthday,” Harris says, mostly as a joke, but it makes him kinda sad so he immediately averts his eyes to the task at hand. 

“Again. Why come _here_. Of all parks. This one absolutely has the most goose shit on the ground.”

“Maybe he likes geese,” Harris says faintly. “And there’s a lot of geese in Springbank, also.”

“Okay but the river stink, Harris. The river stink. You couldn’t take a single mouthful of that cake without the fumes filtering in.” She stabs her trash grabber into the ground and stops even the pretense of cleaning, eyes locked on the man with her arms crossed.

“Don’t stare at him. He’s probably crazy.”

“We’re gonna have to clean that cake up, probably.”

“You know I can hear you both,” the man says. His voice is low, like gargling cigarettes low, and he doesn’t pause in taking methodical forkfuls out of the cake and putting them in his mouth.

“Uh, sorry!” Harris calls.

“Are you okay?” Becca asks.

“No.” The man says simply. He eats another forkful of crumbling cake. It does not look good.

“Huh.” Becca says, blinking. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I would prefer not to. Is it a problem— to eat cake in a park? I wasn’t aware.”

“No man, I mean. Chase your bliss, I guess,” Harris says. He tries to convey with a look to Becca that this dude is definitely on drugs, but she’s ignoring him in favor of staring at the guy.

“Just kind of weird.” Becca affirms with a shrug. “Where’s the cake from?”

“Texas.”

“Um, like Texas America?” Harris says. At this time, a child nearby shrieks, and they both turn to see a goose extending its wings in threat. And when they turn back, the bench is empty. Only the flimsy white cardboard of the cake box flapping sadly in the damp grey wind, plastic fork still stuck deep in the green icing.

“So that was like, a haunting experience, yeah? Like a paranormal happening,” Becca says. Harris nods, for lack of anything better to add. 

/////

“I’m saying it could be a lot of different things, Dean.” Sam says, trying to keep his voice even. Sam felt his brow furrow, exasperation with his brother clocking in for work. 

“So why not witches!” Dean smacked the war room table, thumping Bulgaria soundly. It was as much for emphasis as his real frustration leaking through into physicality.

“Because it’s just livers. And sure there’s a lot of history around haruspex and divination with innards but— but that’s generally sheep or poultry and—“

“Boring!” Dean cuts him off, teeth glinting in an unsettling way. “Uninteresting and unimportant, Sammy! We are talking about current real life not that stupid Greek—“

“ _Roman_ , Dean—!”

“Listen! Will it help us kill them?”

“We don’t even know wha—“

“ _Ah!_ ” He interrupts, harsh and holding up a pointed finger. “Will it help us kill them!”

“It might! Who knows what—“

“Sam!” Dean stands up, the chair flinging out behind him with the force. “Will it help us _kill_ them?”

“No! But—“

“Then I don’t care! Let’s gank ‘em and go before they can fuck up anyone elses life. Meet me at the Impala in five.”

And Dean storms out of the room. The yellow florescents seemed to flicker with his rage and frustration. Sam rubbed his forehead, letting out a deep sigh in the empty space. 

“What the _hell_.” Sam hissed to himself. 

He was going to take ten just to piss Dean off.

His brother had been wound up all month, itching for a hunt. Sam, _hilariously_ , thought bringing him one might help. It seemed like it was doing just the opposite— instead of dragging him out of his funk with any element of a ‘get ‘er done’ attitude Dean was just careening deeper into asshole territory. 

He often would drift off while Sam went into the intricacies of a case, but wouldn’t so blatantly shut him down. Especially when they didn’t know for sure what was killing college students and stealing their livers. His brother had fixated on this concept of witches in a way that didn’t seem… grounded in reality. 

Dean was repressing _something_. And doing such a good job of it that Sam had no idea what it even could be.

Working back in the timeline, it was likely to do with the Bacchus case. And— _yeah_ , that one had been particularly fucked up. Sam had kept a google alert active on the town to see what news stories would come out of it.

And boy had they. 

Sensationalist reporters flocked. As they tend to do whenever something that looked kinda culty if you turned your head and squinted sprung up. This one really didn't take that much squinting since… well. It was a cult.

A bloody one. The kind that really sold newspapers. Some of the violence checked out with the lore, sons’ heads on pikes, ripped limb from limb, treated like animals. But… the mothers. Sam knew that had been Dean and Cas, not some sort of elaborate ritual suicide. The violence and the gore and the viscera that had sent the reports into such a tizy… that had been his brother and an _angel_. 

It had been many years since Sam let himself believe in the luxury of black and white morality. The heaven-good hell-bad false dichotomy that had been spoon-fed to him and made him so wholeheartedly believe himself to be bad. Evil and corrupt and dirty. Unsalvageable. 

Sam shook his head, sweeping the thoughts away. Good and bad were not diametrically opposed. They could co-exist and _did_. In himself and in all other humans. Including his brother, including Cas; human on technicality or no.

But… The gore left behind. It was… brutal. Inhuman.

He knew his brother was capable of those things but… Cas. Cas hadn’t brought Dean back from the brink of that.

Dean hates that brutality that lurks in him. That had been fostered by their father and urged to grow and fester. And Cas knew that, had seen the hatred and the guilt and the resentment that gushes forth when he gives into those urges. 

Cas is more than capable of atrocities, but he would do anything in his power— including commiting said atrocities— to keep Dean from feeling bad about himself.

And the fact that Cas still let this happen to the Bacchic cult… Kind of scared the shit out of Sam.

//////

Dean’s making apple turn-overs. He isn’t sure why— but something about the general air of the day demanded he bake, and specifically bake something distinctly apple-brown-sugar warm. 

It’s not stress baking, whatever Sam says. He’s baking because he wants to. Not because of the itch in his fingertips that started a month ago. The itch that started the second he left that forest and just kept... _growing_. Weaving its way into his tendons and slithering up his arms. It isn’t about the pent up energy coiled in his muscles and it isn’t about the vibrations he feels lancing through his bones every time he takes a step. Everytime his naked skin brushes against something warm or something soft or something living or—

Normally he’d settle those things with a hunt. But Sam thinks they don’t even know what specifically they’re hunting (it was pretty obviously witches) so Dean couldn’t really count on a good session of kicking the shit out of something. Sam was being overly cautious about the whole thing. Since when had it been important to know the exact flavour of the monster they were killing before they set out? Having a home base had spoiled him.

So he’s baking. And it isn’t because he’s stressed. He just wants to bake. He _likes_ to bake.

He’s crumbled some brown sugar on top of the flakey crust to add a bit of crunch when the turnovers come out of the oven and Kevin slides into the room— socks undoubtedly picking up dust bunnies Dean missed cleaning somewhere. Dean turns to put the tray in the oven but says over his shoulder, “Nice timing. Fresh baked goods in fifteen.”

“Mhm.” Kevin said, not nearly excited enough about Dean’s baking. He’s _good_ at baking. People _like_ his baking. “You talked to Sam about that new case yet?”

“The witches you mean?”

Kevin made a noise, “You guys cracked it already? Sam didn’t sound sure when we were talking. Missing organs can be a lot of things.”

“Yeah. But it’s witches.”

“...Okay?” Kevin’s hesitance puts Dean’s teeth on edge.

“I’ve been hunting since before you were born, twerp. I can read the signs. It’s witches.”

It’s quiet a beat as Kevin dips into the pantry and re-emerges with a couple of Sam’s granola bars— one already gripped between his teeth and half unpeeled. He finishes his bite and then asks:

“Have you heard from Cas at all? I mean, he’s usually pretty helpful, right? Angel on the team?”

“...” Dean starts futzing with the dirty batter bowl in the sink.

“He hasn’t been around in a while, right? Sam said maybe you guys got in a fight, or something.” Kevin says this casually— not like Sam sicced him on Dean, but it still makes him clench his jaw. He stares into the still dirty water, his pale reflection looking back, like it’s a way out of the kitchen. What’s he supposed to say? _We fucked in the woods and I think I destroyed our friendship?_

“Okay.” Kevin says, in a tone Dean hates. “So… Not in a sharing mood, huh?”

“Not particularly, _Kevin_.” Dean bites out, grabbing the sponge and forcing some of the pent up energy into scrubbing the dishes where it swirled down the drain with the rest of the gunk.

“Are you ever?”

“ _No_.”

“When _I_ have a huge issue with someone I usually _talk_ to them.” Kevin sounds so much like Sam saying this that Dean almost feels his head spin. ”But you know, maybe _I’m_ the weirdo.” 

“Bully for you.” Dean bites out, snapping his teeth. But Kevin is already leaving the room, hands in his pockets, sliding in his god-damn sock feet. 

_Fuck_.

{-_-}

There was pink biofilm in the corner where the shower tiles meet the ceiling. It should have been cleaned, but he missed it. It escaped his brush as he scrubbed down the stall. Dean is all fucked up. All the way up to the top. 

The riptide of this panic has sucked him in and all he can do is lay on his bed and look at the ceiling, clothes abandoned on the floor after a failed attempt at getting dressed for the day. He can’t stop his mind from going round and round in the same circles it was sunk in two hours ago, five, ten. Like a record finished playing, still spinning but making no sound besides soft clicking. _Click, click, click._

Dean glances up to the bed frame where his ring finger is tapping against the wood, hitting the same imagined beats. Gap where music could be, the dead air on the radio.

The next beat hits. He came back from an unsatisfying shower with the vague intent of calling Cas, lost his nerve and texted instead. But it’s been an hour, and no reply, same as the last three texts he sent. Could be he’s in trouble. Or he just doesn’t want to talk. Dean’s trying to figure why he’s so hung up about it. Why he doesn’t just dial Cas like he would anyone else.

The answer is sort of in the question. He throws his phone down on the mattress and glares up at the ceiling some more.

“This is stupid. I’m stupid.” _Yeah, of course, dumbass, but_. That doesn’t usually stop him from calling people. Calling… friends. Even if he’s somehow irreparably fucked up their friendship which— let's face it— he’s done with basically all his friends. The few people he’s ever called friends. The fewer still who had survived knowing him.

He stands up, phone in hand, open, scrolls to Cas’ contact (with the little wings emoji—that seemed so funny at one time) but he hovers. He doesn’t hit dial. Dean’s in his room in boxers and a t-shirt, it would be… _weird_ to call Cas. 

_Why would it be weird?_ Rather than approach that question he grabs pants out of a drawer and shimmys them on. 

The phone screen is still lit, face up. The little wings mocking him in some way. For some reason. He picks his phone up from the dresser and turns around, connecting the movements into one so it feels less monumental. As he sits on his bed he hits dial, trying not to look at the screen. He grits his teeth and holds it to his ear. It rests, a little warm against his cheek. The drilling hum of the ring buzzes through the small bones in his inner ear. And he waits.

Castiel picks up on the third ring.

“Hello Dean.”

“Cas.” He says, rough.

“Is something wrong?” Cas’ voice is impatient, pinched, maybe, but he sort of always sounds like that. Dean finds himself straining to pick up the sounds in the background--often a freeway or busy crosswalk in Cas’ case. Nothing.

“Uh.” It crawls out of Dean’s throat. “No. Everyone’s safe. Just calling to check in.” There’s something beyond that which he can’t say, and he won’t, but it is there, and he notices it.

There’s an impression of a sound from Cas’ end of the line--a car door closing, maybe, distant, not nearby. Castiel clears his throat.

“If you don’t need anything. I’m busy, Dean.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He stops, fingers twisting in the sheet, “What— what are you doing? You need a hand? Sam and I can be down where you’re at in—“

Dean doesn’t know where Cas is at. He stops talking.

“I don’t need your help with this. But.” There’s a pause, silence. “Goodbye, Dean.”

And the dial tone cuts in.

/////

Vomit gushes out of Cas the instant he hangs up. He’s gripping the side of the bowl, and he hears the phone hit the peeling linoleum somewhere to the side of him. Not cracking, hopefully. But the phone is cheap and the floor is close and it feels like someone has a hold of his vessel and is trying to force _him_ out. 

When the heaving slows down, and he spits bile into the water for what feels like it must (it has to) be the final time, he slides down so he’s lying on the floor. What would Dean do, in this situation? He’s generally gruff, defiant in the face of injury, affronted almost, which is interesting for a man whose life is so filled with death and bodily harm. He can be gentle, though. With Sam. Maybe even with Cas. He thinks of a motel room somewhere else, in the wrong time, and a hand on his arm. Firm, but still, it was supporting him. Dragging him to the bed.

It is treacherous how badly he wants Dean, just his presence, just for him to be in the room. 

He scrubs the back of his hand across his mouth. He wads up some toilet paper and cleans off his wrist.

Inward, the thing resembles more a soul than not a soul. More a formed thing than not a thing. And in his vessel, cells that don’t belong to Jimmy Novak have doubled their number. Not that they have belonged to Jimmy Novak in some time. Not that he is clear now, or ever has been, on if a body is truly _one_ coherent thing. 

And if the rate of growth continues like this, it’s going to start encroaching on things soon. Things he doesn’t need, arguably (all this intestine for such a simple task?) but still. 

He can feel Dean’s soul germinating in his grace. It tugs at the edges of his consciousness, even when he’s not thinking about it. He’s noticing it. He is unable to stop noticing it. And as he heaves himself up, sparks pop in his vision. The feeling like a tide rolling in, waves about to break, and he’s heaving again. Bringing up nothing. Connected to the bowl full of vomit by a thin strand of saliva. 

Sheet cake. It has colors in it. Muted pastels, not unlike the ones in the baby aisle. Funfetti, the label said. Cas can see the reasoning behind the name. Humans can be surprisingly incisive when they least intend. 

The worst part isn’t the taste of bile or how raw his throat is, the way it feels like swallowing glass. 

The worst part is how instantly he feels the absence of Dean’s voice, and how badly he wants it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 

**Author's Note:**

> [SPRUCE](https://dragqueendean.tumblr.com/) & [SLIME](https://nifedick.tumblr.com/)


End file.
